Letting Go of Bitterness (With a Side of Sweet Washi!)

I am currently a member of the By the Well 4 God Creative Team, so this kit was sent to me for free.  However, my opinions will always be my own!

As I’ve journeyed through the By the Well 4 God devotional “Liars and Thieves” each truth has hit home for me.  There are so many negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions that we allow to steal our joy every single day.  They creep in slowly, through small cracks at first, until they are wedged so deep in our psyche that we are emotionally being torn apart.  It is a terrible cycle, and bitterness is one of those feelings that I have the tendency to hold on to.

But, who am I to harbor any resentment or bitterness toward another person?  This feels like one of those “glass houses” realizations.  Have I wronged people before?  Of course.  Have I hurt others or taken advantage of situations out of greed?  Yes.  If we look closely, I’d imagine that most of us have crossed this line in the past.  But, God still loves us, still treats us with such a huge amount of grace.  Yet, I have the audacity to harbor bitter feelings toward another person or toward a situation?  It is absolutely ridiculous when I look at it from that point of view.  In Hebrews, we are warned:

“Make sure that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springs up, causing trouble and defiling many.” Hebrews 12:15 (CSB)

Bitterness eats us up from the inside out.  It not only affects us, but others that we encounter.  Harboring bitterness gets you nowhere and leaves you blinded to the blessings in your life.  We are called to let go of bitter feelings and replace them with love.  Love for ourselves, love for each other, and love for all that God has done and will continue to do.

While the devotional content of “Liars and Thieves” challenges me in deep ways, the theme of the devotional has been a creative spark for me!  When the devotional first landed on my doorstep, the gorgeous colored buttes and mesas on the cover initially caught my eye.  My husband and I took a trip to the Grand Canyon 8 years ago, when I was pregnant with our daughter.  The gorgeous scenery and the vivid colors found in those rock formations made a huge impression on me, and I knew I wanted to capture that feeling on this entry.

I am an avid collector of washi tape, but am often guilty of being an avid hoarder of washi tape as well.  So, I jump at any chance to use up my washi tape while working on projects.  I began with cutting a piece of parchment paper in half and laying the two sides right next to each other but slightly overlapped.

I pulled down my main supply of washi, grabbed a few rolls from my stash, and began layering the colors that appealed to me.  The striping found on the mesas is the perfect opportunity to use this technique and allowed me to pick and choose a lot of different styles of washi tape.  When using this technique, it is important to overlap each strip of washi, so that the final image will stay adhered together.

When I was please with the washi layout, I roughly drew some desert landscaping.  I sketched the formations out in pencil first and then traced over with black sharpie.  At that point, it was easy to cut out the image and decide where I wanted it on my Bible page.  The parchment paper backing is easy to remove because of the two separate, overlapped pieces that I began with.  I adhered the image to the bottom of my page, trimmed the sides, and spent some time really pressing the washi into the page to work out a few bumps and bubbles.  Although I later cover the text with die-cuts, the washi tape still allows the text to be read, which is always a bonus while journaling!

The other main piece that I knew I wanted to incorporate was a stamp that came with a kit add-on reading “A Cup to Hold God’s Grace”.  I chose to stamp this on a separate white piece of paper using a dark blue chalk ink, and then embossing the image with clear embossing powder. I colored the image using watercolors from the kit, a gold gel pen, and Jane Davenport glitz-sea markers to help this piece stand out on the page.

The rest of the page came together very quickly with a mixture of die-cuts, stickers, washi, stamps, and alphas.  I enjoyed getting a chance to use the new chalk inks that I purchased with the kit, but definitely still need some practice with this kind of ink!  It stays wet much longer, which is hard when you are impatient like me!  I topped off my page with a quote from the devotional…

“The thief of bitterness defiles…eating you up from the inside, robbing you of joy.”

As I said before, this devotional continues to challenge me, in the best way possible.  This week, I am focusing on letting go of some deeply seeded bitter feelings and allowing my cup to overflow with God’s grace….

Oh, and I’m also focusing on some more fun with washi tape 😉

Keep it creative,

-The Scrappy Wife

Supplies Used:

• “Liars and Thieves” from By the Well 4 God
• Additional Stamp Set from By the Well 4 God
• Alpha Stickers from By the Well 4 God
• Washi tape from my stash
• Chalk inks
• Clear embossing powder
• Jane Davenport Glitter Markers
• Gold Gel Pen